Turkey Moves Closer to Ending Khashoggi Murder Trial Without Conclusion

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Turkey moved another step closer on Friday to transferring the trial for the murder of the Saudi dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi to Saudi Arabia, a decision that would effectively kill the last case that rights groups hoped would serve a measure of justice for a grisly crime that shocked the world.

Turkey’s justice minister, Bekir Bozdag, voiced his support for the transfer requested by Saudi Arabia, which never recognized the legitimacy of the Turkish trial. Saudi leaders have said they consider their own trial, which wrapped up more than two years ago, the final word on the matter even though rights groups roundly dismissed it as a sham.

The final decision on the transfer will made by the court, probably during its next session, on April 7.

Mr. Khashoggi’s killing in Istanbul in October 2018 exacerbated already strained ties between Turkey and Saudi Arabia, and the end of the Turkish trial could facilitate recent efforts by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey to improve relations with Saudi Arabia and its crown prince and de facto ruler, Mohammed bin Salman.

On Thursday, the prosecutor in the Turkish trial recommended transferring it to Saudi Arabia, as the Saudis had requested. At about the same time he issued his recommendation, the Turkish foreign minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, said in a televised interview that the government was taking important steps to normalize relations with Saudi Arabia.

“Everyone sees that there is stagnation in relations currently,” he said. “Steps are being taken to revive that, and in the upcoming period I can say that concrete steps will be taken.”

Mr. Khashoggi was a prominent journalist who fell out with his government and moved to the United States, where he wrote columns published in The Washington Post that were critical of the Saudi crown prince and his plans to remake the kingdom. Mr. Khashoggi was killed and dismembered by a Saudi hit squad inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, where he had gone to get paperwork he needed to marry his Turkish fiancée, Hatice Cengiz.

His body has never been found.

Prince Mohammed has insisted he knew nothing of the murder plot in advance. However, the Central Intelligence Agency concluded that he greenlighted the operation to kill or capture Mr. Khashoggi.

That trial reinforced the Saudi narrative that Mr. Khashoggi’s death was the result of a rogue operation without the oversight of top officials. The Saudis have never named the men who were sentenced, and a United Nations expert dismissed the trial as “the antithesis of justice.”

The Turkish trial, which opened in 2020, was largely symbolic because the 26 suspects, all Saudi citizens, were being tried in absentia and Turkish law ordinarily does not allow convictions under such circumstances. Saudi Arabia had refused to hand the suspects over for trial.

The Turkish prosecutor in the trial recommended on Thursday that Turkey grant a Saudi request to transfer the case to Saudi Arabia because none of the suspects were in custody and warrants for their arrests could not be carried out.

Nevertheless, if it the trial ends without a conclusion, it will still be a deep disappointment to those who hoped it might bring some small measure of justice for the murder, or at least make public more evidence about how the crime transpired.

Ms. Cengiz said in a Twitter post on Thursday that Turkey faced a choice between the “virtuous” course of action and “holding material interests above all kinds of values.”

Rights groups criticized the Turkish Justice Ministry’s decision.

“Sending the case to Riyadh from Istanbul is ending the hopes of justice that all the world owes to Khashoggi,” said Erol Onderoglu, the Turkey representative for Reporters Without Borders.

Turkey and Saudi Arabia had long been rivals for leadership of the Islamic world, and the kingdom opposed Turkey’s support for the political Islamists of the Muslim Brotherhood and for democracy movements during the Arab Spring uprisings that spread across the region in 2011.

After Mr. Khashoggi’s murder, Mr. Erdogan and his aides dribbled out details about the killing to keep it in the news and humiliate Prince Mohammed, bringing relations between the two countries to a new low. Eventually, an unofficial Saudi boycott drastically reduced the flow of Turkish exports to Saudi Arabia.

In recent months, however, Mr. Erdogan has spoken of improving ties with Saudi Arabia, the Arab world’s largest economy, hoping that better relations will help Turkey recover from an economic crisis which has left it struggling with 50 percent inflation.

So far, Mr. Erdogan appears to have had better luck with the United Arab Emirates, a Saudi ally, where he visited in February.

“Our positive dialogue with Saudi Arabia continues, and we are waiting for progress through tangible steps in the coming period,” Mr. Erdogan told reporters upon his return to Turkey. “We want to advance this process with Saudi Arabia in a positive direction.”

While Turkish and Saudi ministers have visited each other’s countries, a trip to the kingdom that Mr. Erdogan said he planned to make in February never happened.

Ben Hubbard reported from Beirut, Lebanon, and Safak Timur from Istanbul.